Jun. 8, 2011

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Andy Dalton looks great in shorts and a T-shirt. It’s plain that the young man executes a swell handoff, though as I look down at him from the 40th row at Nippert Stadium, it’s hard to tell about his upside.

The Bengals – some of them, a lot of them, an encouraging number of them – who were bored or antsy or both, showed up for an unorganized team activity Wednesday morning on the UC campus. No coaches, no equipment, no pay, no health insurance, no urgency. Just men in shorts.

“Strange?’’ said Adam Jones, repeating a question. “I’ve been through a lot, so it’s not that strange."

Until Greedapalooza I resolves itself, this is what we’ve got. Owners and players can’t figure how to divide $9 billion a year. Lawyers meet and mediate. Judges offer learned opinions. Fans don’t care.

The rank and file dissolves and scatters, temporarily unemployed, paying for insurance, hoping to be back to work soon, gathering informally for a few days at a time, because they don’t know what else to do. On Tuesday, the Bengals defense placed five rubber trash cans around an indoor soccer field, and pretended the cans were offensive linemen. Stop snickering.

And then there is Andy Dalton.

You want to talk about casualties of war? The quarterback some thought the best in the draft slipped out of the first round. The Bengals took him in Round 2, and immediately anointed him Savior. The Bengals have a new offensive coordinator, a new offense, a franchise QB retired in his prime and a prime need for Andy Dalton to play immediately.

Dalton impresses you as a bright guy. He looks to be the sort of player who could handle an NFL playbook being thrown at him. Only right now, he has a playbook and no coaches. And no classroom sessions or practices or coaching. Dalton is like every rookie QB. Every rookie QB needs every second of every day to meet and greet with Messrs. X and O, and to begin to acquaint himself with the terrifying speed of the NFL.

Andy Dalton has none of that. He’s down there in shorts, quasi-practicing.

It’s like passing the bar, without going to law school.

There are ways to describe this scenario. None is pleasant or even borderline optimistic. We liked how veteran guard Bobbie Williams described Dalton’s plight:

“God help the young man," Williams said.

Jordan Palmer took a more technical position.

“This year is harder than any year for a rookie, especially a rookie quarterback,’’ he said. “This is the time you get better."

Palmer says he knows Mark Sanchez well. The New York Jets drafted Sanchez two years ago and started him 15 times as a rookie. Palmer says Sanchez went straight from the draft to New York. “He’s a really smart quarterback and had a good team around him and had an OK year."

Dalton has a team that finished 4-12 last year, fresh coaches he hasn’t been able to talk to, a running back (Ced Benson) who’s a free agent and a couple wide receivers who haven’t proven a thing. It’s not quite the Twilight Zone. But it’s only a third-down-and-two from it.

“He has been placed in a challenging position," Williams decided.

“A position of pressure,’’ Andrew Whitworth called it. “Sometimes, you have to get in there and fight for your life, to be honest. That’s what he has to do."

Dalton sounds as if he’s up to it. But he’s a lion tamer in the center ring, with no whip and no chair. Just a pair of shorts. “If you’re going to come in and play right away, it’s going to be tough. For a quarterback, it’s even tougher,’’ he said. “I can just study and do what I can to prepare myself."

If greed hadn’t been so important, Tuesday would have been the Bengals ninth Organized Team Activity session. Their first mandatory minicamp would have been next week. Meaningful progress might have been made with Dalton. Instead, he’s throwing outs, slants and Go’s to other men in shorts.

Jordan Palmer studies quarterbacks. He thinks Dalton was the best QB in April’s draft. Palmer likes the simplicity of Jay Gruden’s West Coast offense, and he believes whoever the Bengals QB is, he will have the resources to be successful.

Sounds great in June. It’d sound a whole lot better if there were actual football practice going on. I told Andy Dalton that Bobbie Williams suggested we all “pray" for the rookie QB.